Tag Archives: weight control

I fed Ogedei 126g of food yesterday – 73g of woodrat + quail wings in the field, then another 53g of quail in the mews at home to top him off. He keeps a steady weight at around 120g of quail (when overnight lows are between 20F and 30F like they have been) so I thought he would be at a good weight for hunting today. Instead he was at 783g, 20g higher than I hunted him yesterday. It might not sound like much, but he was unresponsive in the mews, taking a few minutes to come to the fist for weighing; he also jumped up twice from the fist to the scales when I tried to put him in the giant hood. Yesterday at 760g he was quite responsive and well-mannered. At 780g I’m sure he’d come back to the lure in the field, but there’s no point in risking it, especially as his response to chasing prey would probably be reduced. All of this to point out that different foods have different nutritional quality. The rat he ate is obviously higher quality than the quail I’ve been feeding him and he put on the extra 20g because of it. I’ll have to experiment with feeding him various amount of rat to see how much he gains or looses.